Uncategorized

Things fixed:
2 toilets

Things broken:
Some plumbing
My budget plan for the year
Flooring and cabinets with damage from water seepage
My schedule for the next month or so as contractors are in and out

Things joyful:
Getting to be on TypeCast RPG where I played a halfling cannibal ranger named Toki’Pobo
Coming home to discover that there was a spontaneous LAN party in my absence
This week eggs hatch twice as quickly in Pokemon Go
Finally hanging family portraits on the wall
Expected guests

Things tired:
Me

We’re on day two of our summer schedule and I’m still trying to find my footing in the schedule shift. This is strange because the shift isn’t as big as it was in past years. My recent high school graduate actually finished her credits early and thus hasn’t been to school in more than a month. My other high school student was partially home schooled and so he was at home half the time anyway. On top of that, the home schooling portion of his education continues into the summer. So the lines between school-in-session and school-is-out are really fuzzy. Yet I still feel like catching my balance is necessary. Two and a half months stretch out in front of us before school schedule imposes again. I feel the pressure to make good use of the time.

In organizing my business focus, I’m struggling with project conflict. There is a long list of things I should do and I’m having trouble clearing my head to focus on just one of them. If I attempt to focus on one, the others tug at my attention whispering “but I’m important too!” The trouble is that some of them are important emotionally and creatively while others are important financially and stability-wise. Therefore the weight I should give each project varies depending on whether I’m in a moment where I’m focused on immediate finances or if I’m in a moment where I’m trying to work toward long held aspirations. All the values and importances shift from hour to hour and minute to minute, until I feel lost in a swirl of thoughts.

I keep thinking that if I can establish a predictible schedule of daily/weekly events, that might quiet some of the noise. Of course establishing such a schedule requires me to decide which things get scheduled time and which should fill in the gaps, which lands me back in the evaluation/value mess of thoughts.

I did get some good news on the college financial aid front, so there’s one clear bright spot for the day. Tomorrow I take my newly-minted college freshman off for their orientation day. Hope that goes well.

I had a plan. I was going to step outside my usual round of things for a week. I was going to put down the host of regular tasks and that was going to open up space for me to think writing thoughts and write words.

Ha ha ha ha ha. (<---- me laughing at my own naivete) This was a trip in two parts. The first was a convention where I was support crew for my daughter. While I did have long hours of mostly-solitude, sitting at a table fractured my attention just enough that I couldn't write much. I did accomplish some brainstorming, so I guess that is something. The second part of my trip was visiting my parents and helping them with some household projects. This included helping sort through boxes left by my Grandmother, painting a porch, organizing papers, taking a tour of the Oakland Temple, and untangling twenty years' accumulation of tangled computer cords. When I list it like that, it doesn't sound like much listed in a sentence like that, but I was fully occupied, body and mind, for the entire four days I spent here. I love organizational work. I love taking a jumble and turning it into a functional space. And my parents have such interesting jumbles full of memory and fascinating accumulated objects. It has been a good four days, but today I get to go home and for that I am very glad. Usually when I'm on a trip, I fold away my home thoughts and don't feel much active homesickness. This time home kept tugging at me, my thoughts were with the at-home folks quite a lot. The largest portion of today will be spent in transit, but by evening I will be back in my house and seeing my own jumbles with new eyes. I will get to set things to rights, but only after I've hugged all my people and pet the kitties.

I’ve attended a lot of Science Fiction and Fantasy conventions. Some of them energize me, others are draining. Often the energy or drain have little to do with the event itself and more to do with my emotional state as I arrive at it, or how I engage with it once I’m there. However the people who are at an event can change it from draining to energizing or vice versa. The one I attended this past weekend was draining. Some of that was that I spent the vast majority of the con running a table for my daughter who was off being on panels or teaching workshops. The dealer’s room was cold and because I’m far from my house there were few familiar faces in the crowd. The best hours of the show were when friends sat with me, either at the table or over food, and we talked for hours. Such conversations are the reason I do conventions at all. when my writer friends stopped by to talk, those were bright spots in long hours of keeping myself occupied while not really speaking to anyone. Actual solitude tends to reinvigorate me, but the isolated non-solutude of being behind a dealer table where I can’t fully tune out because I need to be ready to engage people at a moment’s notice; that is draining. The weekend turned out to be worthwhile in an educational sense. An education for which we paid tuition rather than turning a profit.

Now I am at my parent’s house and much happier. I’m here for three days to help my parents accomplish some house projects that can be better done by backs and arms which aren’t slowed by arthritis. Tomorrow we’ll be re-painting their porch. Today we sorted through boxes of things left by my Grandmother. I love this kind of organization. In the boxes were things that were puzzling or fascinating or beautiful. We got to look through all of them and then haul more than forty boxes of things to various thrift stores. On Thursday we’ll get to tour the Oakland Temple which is currently open to the public after a major renovation. I’m really looking forward to being there again. It is the temple I visited as a teenager for many church-sponsored activities. It is where I got married almost 26 years ago. On Friday I get to go home, and by then I will be more than ready. I miss my people and my house.

I’ve written my fair share of Mother’s Day posts that talk about the emotional complexities of this celebratory day. I’ve gotten philosophical about mothering and pondered how I came to terms with being a mother. Some years I posted nothing about it at all. Those were the years where I was doing my best to dodge the holiday and try to forget it was a thing.

So I think it only fair to acknowledge the actual happiness of this year. It seems like Mother’s Day acts as a magnifying glass, amplifying and bringing into focus how I’m feeling about my life and my parenting failures or successes. The good mother’s days are the ones where my kids are thriving and/or demonstrate that they learned some of the lessons I worked so hard to teach. Because if they’re growing, then all the sacrifices of time and emotional effort are redeemed. If they are faltering all my self doubt comes into sharp focus. I know that Mother’s Day isn’t supposed to be a score card. I know I should not use my children’s lives as a measure for my success. I work at not doing those things, but the self doubts creep in, especially during the hard years.

On the joyful years, like this one, I’m not feeling self-congratulatory. What I’m feeling is grateful. I have four amazing children with bright futures ahead and they’re finally stepping forward into those futures. I have Howard, who sneaks out of the house to buy a flowers and an assortment of fancy cheeses because he loves me. I have my mom whom I’ll get to visit in two weeks and who I’ll call tomorrow. I have a yard full of plants that are blooming and about to bloom. I have writer friends who nurture my creative efforts. I have so much in my life that is beautiful and good. Mother’s Day seems as good as any for me to pause and fully feel grateful for all the things I have.

If you are among those who are having a difficult day today, I offer this hope: I’ve had a lot of difficult Mother’s Days, and this year I’m not. Perhaps in your future you’ll also have a day where you feel nothing but happy and grateful.

Today one of my kids had a panic attack at school and he stayed at school instead of coming home. Then after school, he went to a friend’s house, which he hasn’t done in several years. Another of my kids voluntarily left the house to go for a walk in the sunshine. A third had a meeting with a potential mentor and left the meeting excited about possibilities. The fourth spent most of the day head-down in creative projects, calmly working to get them all done.

All of it happened without fanfare. They are growing and it is beautiful to see.

It is raining this evening and it feels like the sky is matching my heart a bit. Just two days ago I was reveling in blooms and speaking philosophically about how growth comes in cycles. Today is one of the days when I have to step up and believe my fine words when the hard things have shown up again. As I knew they would. They always do. But they will also get better again. As they do.

Even as I’m feeling like the weather matches my emotional landscape, I am also enjoying the sound of the rain as it hits the roof. There is something soothing about being sheltered and warm while listening to the water fall. I can look out my window and watch it accumulate in puddles and flow along the gutters. Rain lands on my flowers and nourishes them so that their next blooming will also be beautiful. Life requires rain. Growth requires hard days.

And truthfully, this day isn’t so hard, not compared to others that I’ve gone through. This one is just a little blue and tired. I can sit with that and trust tomorrow will be better.

I’m lost in the middle of Spring Break week and every day feels like Saturday, but there is a lot of work I’m supposed to be doing for business things. Also I think we’ve reached peak disruption with the front room cupboard project, so everything feels messy and out of control. Some years I use spring break as practice for summer schedule. This year not so much. Oh well. Tomorrow is outing day. We’ll see how that goes.

This week NASA was supposed to have the first all-women space walk. Two female astronauts were going to don space suits and leave the space station to do necessary maintenance. This event gained traction on social media where people became excited at a milestone event demonstrating that women were less sidelined than they used to be in STEM fields. Then the mission was scrubbed because the space station only has one suit readily available that is sized appropriately for women. It was a decision made solely on logical, safety reasons, with no intent to take something away from women. There is no intent to make women less than or push them to the side. And yet, a woman has to stay in the space station so a man can take her place.

I’ve been watching conversations about this via twitter. I’ve seen explanations of space suits and why fit is a safety issue. I’ve seen long historical threads showing the history of Women and NASA. I know that this is, theoretically, only a small setback in the progress of women in science fields. Or rather, it could be a small setback as long as those in charge of budgets use this moment to commit to making space suits for a larger range of astronaut body types. According to the article linked above, NASA is committed to doing just that. However, they aren’t the only ones involved in the decisions. It would not all all surprise me to see that for logical, financial, and space reasons the people in charge decide not to fund, transport, and store more space suit sizes. It has happened before, which is part of how we ended up here.

In order to allow two women to space walk together, someone has to decide that making that possible is more important than logical financial calculations. Based on past record, I can’t feel sure that someone will decide in favor of a wider range of suit sizes. Even if they do, there is still a loss here. This moment is gone. These two astronauts can’t do their job together this week. Because of duty rosters they may never get the chance to walk in space together. That may or may not be a personal emotional loss for these astronauts. But I am definitely seeing sadness and loss in people online who were looking forward to a moment that is now pushed off into an uncertain future months or years from now instead of happening this week.

I am feeling the loss of that moment. Not so much because I was eagerly anticipating it or riding much emotion on an all-female space walk, but because having the moment taken away resonates with personal experiences where for logical, financial, scheduling reasons I had to do the equivalent of staying inside the space station while someone else goes out to walk. A single incident of this type isn’t so bad, but I have an accumulation of them. Over and over and over it makes perfect, logical sense for me to stay at home, to not go to events, to put my creative work aside and do the administrative work instead. The pattern is persistent enough and grieving enough that Howard and I have deliberately taken steps to counteract it. We sometimes choose to ignore the most logical path and decide based on emotional or aspirational reasons instead. Having these conversations and altering our decision processes has done much to heal me from the repeated wounding I experienced. I still get hit by it though. Usually by events/decisions outside Howard or my decision making power. And it’s never personal, just logical.

So I really hope that NASA and others with decision making power use this as a moment to remember that they are an aspirational entity. All of our space missions exist because we’re willing to reach for learning and experience that doesn’t always make logical financial sense. Making space accessible to more people means more sizes of space suits, and more people on design teams who recognize the need for them. NASA can do better. We all can.

Yesterday I got an email that managed to punch three anxiety buttons simultaneously. (the trifecta: Money, healthcare, loss of services my child needs.) In the end the email was actually giving me good news on all three of those fronts, but my mind catastrophized so quickly that I wasn’t able to parse the email correctly until after I’d spent several hours stressed and stewing. I ended up having to send a chaser email to append to my first stressed email which basically said “never mind, I re-read and like your plan after all.” Then I spent several hours stewing in the embarassment that I’d once again looked overwrought/ anxious to this particular group of people. I don’t like how a single email can throw me so badly off balance.

***

I just spent an hour looking at industrial shelving options. This search was brought on because earlier today I stood in my warehouse space and did the mental calculations to figure out how many more shipments of books before we run out of floor space. Since the warehouse has thirty foot ceilings, going vertical is the obvious solution. I’m not thrilled at the idea of hefting boxes of books high up onto shelves, but we keep making books and I need to use the space I have more intelligently. I can add “shopping for industrial shelving” to the list of life experiences that I did not expect to have.

***

I am still waiting on ship coins. They are now almost two months overdue. One of those months is on Howard and I. We simply didn’t get them done in time. The second month is because our delay landed the production time for the coins exactly across the Chinese New Year holiday when the factory closes down for ten days, but the US based office keeps taking orders. This results in a huge backlog. I don’t mind that there is a delay. I firmly believe in people getting holidays. The part that has annoyed me is that I’ve been told three different times “your coins should ship tomorrow.” Delay = fine. Inaccurate information about the extent of that delay which causes me to have to shuffle my plans multiple times over two weeks = time for me to escalate my annoyance from emails to phone calls. Result of phone call, “your coins should ship Monday.” But this time a boss-level person in the US talked to a boss-level person over in China, so (maybe, hopefully) the information will be accurate this time.

***

I took my 18 year old on a campus tour this week. It was yet another milestone experience that wasn’t at all shaped how society expects it to be. I may never know what it is like to have a teenager who is chomping at the bit excited to launch into adulthood, thrilled at the experiences which are to come. Mine all face the future like it is a rabid animal ready to bite them. I know that for this particular generation, fear-of-the-future is more normal than it used to be, but that doesn’t mean I know how to navigate my role as parent of adult children who aren’t ready to launch. I’m still making this up as I go.

***

My garage has cupboards in it. We’ve brought one inside to test sand and test stain. Once we’ve figured out exactly what process we want to take for turning these into finished cupboards, then the work will begin in earnest. It would also help if daytime temperatures stay above 50 so that the cupboards are warm enough to stain.